Devil Seed (2012)
2/10
Look guys! I'm an auteur!
14 August 2015
Watching this film, I was constantly struck by the way the director inserted himself into the project with such a loud thud.

Playing camera and light tricks that seem designed only to showboat his technique, what is really revealed is an object lesson in the old phrase "Knowing just enough to get oneself in trouble." I can only hope that with the passage of time, the director/writer/editor/Svengali behind this wet splat comes to be humiliated by how amateurish he once was as he's grown into creating valid works.

Plotwise, NO new ground is covered here. Not a centimeter of fresh ideas, but a fairly sizable contribution to teen-boy gratification fantasies wherein pretty girls say the c-word and a bleach blonde gives generously to the public nipple fund and the heroine is ...naturally, a virgin. Completely gratuitous gazongas (In the shower, of course!) is a sign someone has lost focus. This film doesn't ever seem to have bothered so much as looking for its reading glasses.

To get performances this poor on film requires determination in casting, extraordinary bad-luck or a George Lucas level micro-managerial determination to suck any kind of reality out of the otherwise human-shaped beings verbalizing and mugging on the beleaguered screen. Add to that a series of times where you can literally speak the dialogue before the characters do, and you have a morbid product to foist upon people who could have otherwise put that hour and a half of their fleeting lives into anything and found it more worthwhile.

The question of why it was made has been tossed out in a few reviews and while it seems like a bit of a mystery, I don't think it is at all. The answer lies in the opening of this review. It was a vanity piece created by a would-be auteur without talent or technique enough to assemble a film worth watching. I just hope he's able to grow using this film as experience. Another film this bad and Ewe Boll is going to be hiring hit people to come after this guy for working his stretch of sidewalk.

Best recommendation is for 12 year-old boys who've never heard of horror films before. THAT would be a happy group. Anyone else is going to find themselves checking their phones during most of this digital face-palm.
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